Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who spoke at one of the breakout sessions, was just one of the hundreds of attendees, many of them teachers, there to strategize about the next phases of the partnership between Chicago Socialists and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Of course, all recording was strictly verboten unless you had been preapproved by the Chicago Socialists.

The event kicked off with Becca Barnes’s keynote speech. Barnes, a Chicago teacher, spoke about the new era of Marxism in America stemming from the Chicago Socialists’ recent successes in running the show during the Chicago Teachers Strike. Said Barnes, who referred to everyday American capitalists as “capitalist vampires,” “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike.” From her talk and other succeeding events throughout the day, it was clear that the Teachers Union and Marxists were one and the same.

I attended three break-out sessions in addition to the opening plenary. Each began with the speaker congratulating Barack Obama on his win. Rather than allowing discussion, the Chicago Socialists had a policy that disallowed actual person-to-person interaction; rather, the moderator required that you “raise your hand in a fist” in order to be placed in line to discuss. If you didn’t raise your hand in a fist, you were placed after those who did conform and raise their hand in a fist. As a queue formed, the result was that no comment addressed the previous issue raised.

Thankfully, after hours of enduring non-discussion and hate speech against Americans (and being amongst those celebrating a philosophy of mass murderers), I was “outed” as not a communist, told I was “not in solidarity” and surrounded by members of the Chicago Socialists who told me to leave the Northwestern School of Journalism premises. Also “spotted” as not in solidarity was Rebel Pundit, who had a more interesting exit than I:

Just what did the Chicago Socialists feel they had to hide, that attendees such as myself, observing, might expose?

Perhaps just how intertwined the Chicago Teachers Union is with the Chicago Socialists. Perhaps that Northwestern University was hosting a conference where the philosophy of mass murderers was held up. Perhaps that parents might feel uncomfortable that these ideas were being presented to their children on-campus. And perhaps that parents of local schoolchildren might find out that their pre-school teacher, social worker, or Teachers Union rep had more than “for the kids” on their mind during this summer’s protests.

It is not an overstatement to say, based on the words of the teachers who filled the rooms at the Marxism Conference, that the Teachers agenda and the Marxist agenda is one and the same.

Sally, I must strongly disagree with you. Socialism is not bland; It is the bitter stench of death. Much less than not loving, it is the necrophilistic love of death. It seeks to crush, not dissallow independant thought. It crushes the very life out of all who fall under it’s dictate. LIVE FREE OR DIE!

Remember in Soviet Russia the apparatchiks all fought for their special little place in the state machine. It gave them their identity and they’d claw to keep it, whether they were the babushka grandmother in the lobby of the state apartment building keeping track of who came and went, a minor functionary in some regional state bureaucracy, or an office worker with a coveted Moscow internal passport. It gave them purpose, sustenance, and a sense that they were part of the state, which they had been educated to believe was their purpose.

It was all about identity and having that identity within the larger state.

And that extra loaf of bread; that is, the privilege that came with their tiny office, whatever it was. The ability to put their child into a slightly better school than yours (some things never change). The right to use a dacha on the Black Sea for a week. The special tickets to see Red Army play Wings.

It was privilege regularized. It was predictable; they knew they’d get theirs. In a capitalist society privilege is something you have to work for and depends on your ability to get it; in an unfair capitalist society (e.g., Haiti) you can be smart and work hard and never get a single privilege.

Socialism uses that combined with mankind’s lust for being one-up on his neighbors to present an irresistible offer to the new Soviet man and woman: join the Party, play along, be part of the larger whole and you WILL be rewarded.

Oh this hasn’t been subtle for many years. I had occasion to be working at the Univ. of Mass (UMASS) in the early 2000’s and witnessed a similar “convention” of Marxist/socialists. It is there that I got a copy of “Radical Teacher” (http://www.radicalteacher.org/about.asp). “Editorial Collective should tell you all you need to know.

UMASS also employs Dr. Jennie Traschen, who had the bad timing to be besmirching the flag and stating “Actually, what the flag stands for is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and repression” on September 10, 2001. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/14/sm.09.html

[…] Legal Insurrection has more: Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who spoke at one of the breakout sessions, was just one of the hundreds of attendees, many of them teachers, there to strategize about the next phases of the partnership between Chicago Socialists and the Chicago Teachers Union. […]

[…] we’ve shown the relationship, or the uniformity, between unions and the Communist Party. Legal Insurrection has the story of how the Midwest Marxism Conference we chock full of teachers. Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who spoke at one of the breakout sessions, was […]

You know, we really have no one to blame for education in America today but ourselves. Roughly 40 years or so ago we essentially handed the radical left the keys to our children’s minds and said “here, we’ll throw money at you, make our kids smart.” Where do you think all the lunatics from the 60’s went? Bill Ayers…education, a professor, Angela Davis…education, a professor. The list goes on, we let them turn our kids into unprepared droids and they continue to do so. What a horrible thing we have done.

[…] One person who attended the conference noted that with the abundance of teachers and their response to the messages and participation in the workshops, it gave a clear message that the Chicago Teachers Union is one with the local Marxists. A number of the workshops were led by members of the local Chicago Teachers Union. […]